How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting and explaining data.

Using charts and graphs is useful for breaking up long and difficult information, and making technical data easier to understand.

You can present information with tables, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex data with figures, percentages and comparisons easily, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them visualize your information.

Graphs and charts help explain complex information so your audience can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert stunning and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Lets you add chart or graph data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Will dynamically resize for mobile browsers

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison data or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), an easier way to add your information is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into .jpg and .png images and then simply insert your image into your site content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add interactive bar charts and pie graphs to WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

Fortunately, there is a plugin for WordPress users that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create beautiful and interactive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or download Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed dynamic graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in a few simple steps.

Visualizer uses Google Visualization API to render charts, which support cross-browser compatibility (adopting VML for older IE versions) and cross-platform portability to iOS and new Android releases, and are based on pure HTML5/SVG technology (adopting VML for old IE versions), so no additional plugins or add-ons are required.

The plugin also provides a variety of charts optimized for your data visualization needs, including:

• Line chart
• Area chart
• Bar chart
• Column chart
• Pie chart
• Geo chart
• Gauge chart
• Candlestick chart
• Scatter chart

Visualizer is flexible and customizable, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match the look and feel of your website. Various options are available for each chart that allow you to fully customize their look and feel.

Additionally, charts are rendered using HTML5/SVG technology to provide cross-browser compatibility (including VML for older IE versions) and cross platform portability to iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Your web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without requiring the installation of extra plugins.

How To Install The Plugin

Inside your WordPress dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …

In the Add Plugins page type in “visualizer” into the search field and hit enter …

Locate Visualizer in the search results area and click the “Install Now” button …

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can also get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by selecting Media > Visualizer Library in your admin menu …

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library options …

After installing the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to insert into your posts or pages.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

To add a new graph or chart to the Visualizer library, click on ‘Add New’ …

A gallery displaying all of the built-in types of graphs and charts available will load on your screen.

Select the type of chart or graph you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …

Your selected graph/chart type will pop up in a new window.

The next step is to upload a CSV file with the data you want your chart or graph to be populated with …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• Your first row includes the column headings.
• The second row includes the series type (e.g. string, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, just use the sample file that comes with the plugin.

Once you have done this, select the data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload the CSV file from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

Locate and select your file and then click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin will now import your data and display it using the graph/chart type selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

To learn how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, go here:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing your data, make sure that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin displays a number of customization settings …

Visualizer gives you complete control of your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:

• General Settings – Configure chart title settings, font styles, tooltip, and legend.
• Pie Settings – Create 3D pie charts, draw slices counterclockwise, set the text content displayed on the slice, create a “donut” pie chart, rotate the chart’s “start” angle and set the slice border color.
• Residue Settings – Set the ‘Visibility Threshold’ (the slice relative part, below which a slice will not show individually.), ‘Residual Slice Label’ (the label for the combination slice that holds all slices below slice visibility threshold, e.g. “Other”), and ‘Residue Slice Color’.
• Slice Settings – Customize the ‘Slice Offset’ (how far to separate a slice from the rest of the pie), and ‘Slice Color’.
• Layout & Chart Area – Configure the layout (total size of chart) including the width and height of the chart as a number of percentage, background color for the main area of the chart and the chart border width and color, and the placement and size of the chart area (where the chart itself is drawn, excluding axis and legends).

Once you are happy with the way your chart or graph appears, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

The chart or graph will be added to the ‘Visualizer Library’ section …

Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this allows you to add graphs and charts to your WordPress pages very easily …

Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by their type …

After a graph or chart has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or trash it …

Visualizer Usage

After creating a new chart or graph and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s simple to insert it into your content.

First, create a new post or page (or open an existing one) …

Next, place your mouse cursor where you would like to insert your visual element into the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the chart or graph you want to insert into your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This will add a shortcode for the element into your content …

After you have finished adding the visual element, click on Publish to publish (or update) your page or post …

After updating your post, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

The item will show up in your content …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive charts for mobile browsing …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This is a real time-saver if you’re managing dynamic chart data in WordPress.

The plugin developers have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

For tutorials on editing, cloning, deleting and adding data to your charts, go to the website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert great-looking and dynamic charts and graphs into WordPress with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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